-When I read this poem, I thought of us all here on Theos-talk,
strangers, but yet, not so strange. I can visualize him meeting our
Founders in New York City. They would have liked each other. If we all
could meet, I think we would like each other too.
Marie
To a Stranger
Passing stranger! you do not know
How longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking,
Or she I was seeking
(It comes to me as a dream)
I have somewhere surely
Lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall'd as we flit by each other,
Fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me,
Were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become
not yours only nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes,
face, flesh as we pass,
You take of my beard, breast, hands,
in return,
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you,
when I sit alone or wake at night, alone
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Walt Whitman [1819-1892], American journalist and poet
For those of you interested in his biography, here is an excerpt:
portrait: from an 1854 engraving by Samuel Hollyer
Walt Whitman
Born on May 31, 1819, Walt Whitman was the second son of Walter
Whitman, a housebuilder, and Louisa Van Velsor. The family, which
consisted of nine children, lived in Brooklyn and Long Island in the
1820s and 1830s. At the age of twelve Whitman began to learn the
printer's trade, and fell in love with the written word. Largely
self-taught, he read voraciously, becoming acquainted with the works
of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible. Whitman worked as a
printer in New York City until a devastating fire in the printing
district demolished the industry. In 1836, at the age of 17, he began
his career as teacher in the one-room school houses of Long Island. He
continued to teach until 1841, when he turned to journalism as a
full-time career. He founded a weekly newspaper, Long-Islander, and
later edited a number of Brooklyn and New York papers. In 1848,
Whitman left the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to become editor of the New
Orleans Crescent. It was in New Orleans that he experienced at first
hand the viciousness of slavery in the slave markets of that city.
On his return to Brooklyn in the fall of 1848, he founded a "free
soil" newspaper, the Brooklyn Freeman, and continued to develop the
unique style of poetry that later so astonished Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In 1855, Whitman took out a copyright on the first edition of Leaves
of Grass, which consisted of twelve untitled poems and a preface. He
published the volume himself, and sent a copy to Emerson in July of
1855. Whitman released a second edition of the book in 1856,
containing thirty-three poems, a letter from Emerson praising the
first edition, and a long open letter by Whitman in response. During
his subsequent career, Whitman continued to refine the volume,
publishing several more editions of the book.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Whitman vowed to live a "purged" and
"cleansed" life. He wrote freelance journalism and visited the wounded
at New York-area hospitals. He then traveled to Washington, D.C. in
December 1862 to care for his brother who had been wounded in the war.
Overcome by the suffering of the many wounded in Washington, Whitman
decided to stay and work in the hospitals. Whitman stayed in the city
for eleven years. He took a job as a clerk for the Department of the
Interior, which ended when the Secretary of the Interior, James
Harlan, discovered that Whitman was the author of Leaves of Grass,
which Harlan found offensive. Harlan fired the poet.
Whitman struggled to support himself through most of his life. In
Washington he lived on a clerk's salary and modest royalties, and
spent any excess money, including gifts from friends, to buy supplies
for the patients he nursed. He had also been sending money to his
widowed mother and an invalid brother. From time to time writers both
in the states and in England sent him "purses" of money so that he
could get by.
In the early 1870s, Whitman settled in Camden, where he had come to
visit his dying mother at his brother's house. However, after
suffering a stroke, Whitman found it impossible to return to
Washington. He stayed with his brother until the 1882 publication of
Leaves of Grass gave Whitman enough money to buy a home in Camden. In
the simple two-story clapboard house, Whitman spent his declining
years working on additions and revisions to a new edition of the book
and preparing his final volume of poems and prose, Good-Bye, My Fancy
(1891). After his death on March 26, 1892, Whitman was buried in a
tomb he designed and had built on a lot in Harleigh Cemetery.
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